When the World Breaks
by Unidentified Pie
Summary: When the world shatters around you, Ryner knows that there's nothing you can do but watch.


When the world shatters around you, there is nothing you can do but watch.

Ryner knows that. He's watched the world crumble around him time and time again, watched as every illusion and dream of happiness he ever held shattered and burned down.

He knows the horror of reaching out, trying to grasp anything, just a single piece of your crumbling world, only to have it fall through your fingers, which are slick with crimson blood.

He knows, because he's seen it all before, all too many times, and more than once, he's been the one to destroy it. He's been the one who burnt everything to the ground, who razed the land and slaughtered his friends.

When the world burns to the ground before you, you can do nothing but watch.

Even as everything turned to ashes before his very eyes, smiles distorting into contortions of absolute terror, mouths giant 'O's of horrified fear, former friends, former comrades, former enemies alike crumbling in horrible, blackened remains, their ashes mingling until there was no way of telling which was which, who was who, Ryner could do nothing but watch.

(Or perhaps he was laughing, as the case may have been, but then again, not everyone is a monster. Just him, only him.)

And long after, when he was standing among the ruins, staring down at the ashes and realising that when it came down to it, people were just people, friend or foe, they all burned down to the same thing, when the wind was whipping his hair around and making him shiver because always, every single time, his shirt would be drenched in blood, blood that was not his own or his own mingled with someone else's to become a single tone of crimson, scarlet, maroon (and it was another reminder that people all came down to the same thing), when the same wind picked up the pale ashes and tossed them to the skies, he couldn't do a thing but stare helplessly, wondering if it might have been more respectful to bury them.

When everything distorts before your very eyes, the good turning bad and the laughter turning to tears, there is nothing you can do but watch the show.

There's been betrayal after betrayal, hurt after hurt, evil after evil, but there is nothing that can match what he's done, so he doesn't have the right to complain, does he? But he's a selfish, disgusting monster, so when everything twists before him, the beautiful illusion turning into a nightmare that he cannot possibly escape from except maybe in his dreams - which is ironic, don't you think? - when there happiness he felt before becomes a knife that jabs into his heart, the warmth fleeing as it's stolen away, he moans that the world sucks, everything sucks, but really, it's just him.

It's just him, because he's a monster, he kills when he doesn't want to and there is something in him that laughs the whole time, and he is a despicable demon that has slaughtered so many, massacred entire armies, laughing hysterically, maniacally the whole while, even though inside he was trapped and screaming and sad and trying, trying so hard to be let out and break free and stop things. And Ryner want to laugh when he thinks of that, wants to laugh a desperate, helpless laughter, which bubbles in his chest and wells up in his throat and comes out more like a sob, because _it's all him_. It's all because of him, it's all his fault, and his bloody hands cannot reach anything.

His hands, which were slick with blood that was crimson, scarlet, maroon, running in rivulets down his empty, terrible, destructive palms, to the tips of his awful, disgusting, cruel fingers, and dripping in horrible, dark red beads that fell like tears to the ground.

Those hands cannot catch anything. He cannot save anyone. When the world shatters, burns down, twists and distorts around him, there is nothing he can do but watch.

Ryner knows that. He _knows_, he knows all too well.

But he also thought he'd never be needed by anything, and yet, here he is, a beautiful, blond swords-woman clad in pink and supposedly emotionless, but usually sadistic, clinging to his shirt, her slender, pale, unmarred hands fisted so tightly in the fabric that Ryner thinks he'll never pry them off, and she's crying. She's crying, even though she's supposed to feel nothing, she's sobbing with great, heaving jerks, because she thought he was dead. She's crying because Sion, who is the damn king and was supposed to dispose of him but didn't, _didn't_, and cried the whole time instead, went mad and told her that he'd killed Ryner.

Nobody's supposed to care. He's a monster, a disgusting, despicable, selfish monster who chose to live even when his existence brought others pain, who burdened Sion and did nothing, absolutely nothing, for Ferris, but she's crying anyway, and Sion cried when he was supposed to be killing Ryner, and it doesn't make sense. The world's gone crazy and the smiles twisted into tears and the happy illusion has shattered because _Sion_, peace-loving, kind, gentle _Sion_, has declared war, but maybe not every happy illusion has shattered.

Because Ferris is crying, but she's crying _for_ him. And Sion cried, too, because he had to kill _Ryner_. And because Ryner is selfish, because he's such a despicable, selfish monster, he feels happy - it's the first time he can remember that anyone in the world has cried for him. It's the first time that anyone has cared enough to cry.

And the world has warped, twisted, shattered and burned down around him, but this time, even though Ryner suspects that everything will probably just slip out of his bloodstained fingers again, there's another pair of hands, slender, pale and unmarred, to help him, to sift through the ashes by his side, to dig through the ruin and destruction to find Sion and the rest of their broken joy, so that one day, one day the three of them might laugh together again.

This time, he's going to fight tooth and nail, go out kicking and screaming and casting every single spell he knows, because he's selfish, dammit, and these are his friends. There will be no one else in the world like this pair of crazy idiots who will actually cry for a monster like him, and he is not going to just watch this time. It might be useless, it might be stupid and crazy and absolutely foolish, but then again, Ferris herself has deemed him a lazy fool, a useless fop, and since he's a fool, he might as well be foolish doing something worthwhile.

When the world breaks, you try your hardest to pick up the pieces, to find the most important bits and wield them together again. You try your hardest to make sure it never breaks again.

It doesn't always work, but maybe sometimes, it does.

And it always helps to have someone else helping you look.


End file.
